transferred to the measure itself a sentiment of disapprobation, excited originally by the manner of its adoption.  When I saw people expatiate with calmness, and heard them speak of it as a means of distinguishing themselves, I did not sufficiently allow for the tendency of the French to make the best of every thing, or the influence of vanity on men who allow it to make part of the national characteristic:  and surely, if ever vanity were laudable, that of marking a detestation for revolutionary principles, and an attachment to loyalty and religion, may justly be considered so.  Many whom I then accused of being too lightly affected by the prospect of exile, might be animated by the hope of personally contributing to the establishment of peace and order, and rescuing their country from the banditti who were oppressing it; and it is not surprising that such objects should dazzle the imagination and deceive the judgment in the choice of measures by which they were to be obtained.

The number of emigrants from fashion or caprice is probably not great; and whom shall we now dare to include under this description, when the humble artizan, the laborious peasant, and the village priest, have ensanguined the scaffold destined for the prince or the prelate?—­But if the emigrants be justifiable, the refugees are yet more so.

By Emigrants, I mean all who, without being immediately in danger, left their country through apprehension of the future—­from attachment to the persons of the Princes, or to join companions in the army whom they might deem it a disgrace to abandon.—­Those whom I think may with truth be styled Refugees, are the Nobility and Priests who fled when the people, irritated by the literary terrorists of the day, the Brissots, Rolands, Camille Desmoulins, &c. were burning their chateaux and proscribing their persons, and in whom expatriation cannot properly be deemed the effect of choice.  These, wherever they have sought an asylum, are entitled to our respect and sympathy.

Yet, I repeat, we are not authorized to discriminate.  There is no reasoning coldly on the subject.  The most cautious prudence, the most liberal sacrifices, and the meanest condescensions, have not insured the lives and fortunes of those who ventured to remain; and I know not that the absent require any other apology than the desolation of the country they have quitted.  Had my friends who have been slaughtered by Le Bon’s tribunal persisted in endeavouring to escape, they might have lived, and their families, though despoiled by the rapacity of the government, have been comparatively happy.*